Email “Maddow” to Mackinac (email link now included).
By now you have heard the latest in the ongoing story of intimidation by right-wing groups using Freedom of Information Act statutes.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank based in western Michigan, made FOIA requests for the email of a whole bunch of professors that are teaching at several public universities. The MCPP wanted the prof’s emails that had the words “Madison,” “Wisconsin” or “Maddow.”
The last is an obvious reference to Rachel Maddow, the progressive host of the MSNBC evening show that has been supportive of workers in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere as we fight for our collective bargaining rights.
The Mackinac Center is funded by the worst of the right-wing money bags: The Koch brothers, The Wal-Mart Foundation and the Prince family foundation of Blackwater infamy.
TPM has done a good job at covering the issue.
I have no problem with FOIA laws. FOIA laws were originally passed to expose wrong doing on the part of political leaders. Only in the past few years have state legislators added teachers to those who are covered by the law. In Illinois, while my work email use has always had restrictions placed on it by work rules demanded by my board of education and negotiated by bargaining (based on the theory that my board owns it), it has only been in the past two years that my email and my personnel file are open to state government FOIA scrutiny. Anybody can file a FOIA request to see my email and personnel file. As a practical matter, it is easier for everyone else in the world to get access to my personnel file than it is for me to get access to it.
Some have questioned whether my concern with this issue is overblown. Some question whether it should be characterized as attempts at intimidation or just harassment. Since I have been a target of a right-wing FOIA request, I am not in doubt about its intent.
I think we should respond in a couple of ways.
One is to expose who is behind it and what their intentions are.
The other is to not allow it to stop us from speaking out and organizing to defend our union rights or what counts as good educational practice and policies. More teacher blogs. More teachers at Lobby Day. More, more, more.
If you go to the web site of the Mackinac Center, it is clear who these weasels are and what they stand for.
In a silly attempt to compare themselves to investigative reporters, the Center refused comment to Rachel Maddow on their latest crusade against professors of labor studies.
Ken Braun, managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential (a Mackinac Center invention), told The Times, “As a general policy, we don’t discuss our FOIAs until we write about them.” Media outlets as a rule do not share with other media outlets their ongoing research for upcoming articles.
I found this on their site right next to a post opposing laws restricting smoking in public places.
Goofballs.
Here’s what I would ask.
Show your disdain for these creeps by sending them an email: mcpp@mackinac.org
If you’re a teacher, don’t do it from work.
Just send them the word “Maddow.” They’ll know.
Speaking of dead butch, you got to like those idiomatic pseuds: Steve Gunn, Ken Braun, and Jeff Gannon, huh? Muy macho! Of course great media poseurs are born, and not made. re Wolf Blitzer.
It is simply wrong to read people’s private mail without a warrant which should require evidence they have committed a crime. The professors can fight back by using encryption such as PGP or S/MIME on all their correspondence. The snoops will then see nothing but gibberish if they get their hands on the entire body of mail in the university’s mail server. This is medieval thinking. It is aimed at destroying academic freedom.